


Weightless

by blessedthrice



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Boy Love, Chubby Jean, M/M, Pastel Marco, Sweet, jean marco gift exchange
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-24
Updated: 2016-12-24
Packaged: 2018-09-11 15:32:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,277
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8996452
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blessedthrice/pseuds/blessedthrice
Summary: Jean is a semi-popular high school student who feels insecure about his weight, although he'd never tell anyone. Marco is the slender boy in the pastel clothes who has become the object of his obsession.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [phoe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/phoe/gifts).



The first time Jean sees him, he’s lying in the grass.

It’s free period, and the campus is quiet. 

All along the quad and in the field beyond, there are students gathered in small, lazy circles, their heads huddled together so close that their cheeks nearly touch. He remembers how things were in grade school, when they would press together with their white shoes in star shapes and sing bubblegum, bubblegum in a dish. It was different then, he thinks, when the grass was greener and there was always a wish to be had at the end of things.

The afternoon sun is high in the sky, winking in the calm, cloudless blue. He sees the light shine off their burnished heads, glimmering in brilliant golds and browns. 

And then there is him, lying prostrate on his back, so low in the grass that Jean almost doesn’t see him.

His hair is spilling across the green like spilled ink, black and soft as silk. His eyes are closed, but Jean can imagine them clearly. Warm, bright. He is all crisp folds and buttons—a pale yellow shirt fastened to the slope of his Adam’s apple, which rolls gently when he breathes. His trousers are sky blue, belted high on his waist, which is slender and bony at the hips. 

Jean can imagine him smoking a cigarette, or wearing white sunglasses, or eating strawberries alone on a blanket. Something simple, and shy. Something he wants to be a part of, to sink his teeth into. 

When the breeze cuts across the field, his hair trembles like a leaf. 

Jean imagines himself reaching out, letting his fingers slip through those dark strands.

He imagines himself inside that body, with slim hips and long legs and girlish lips.

When the bell rings, he realizes he’s been standing in the same place for nearly half an hour. He struggles to compose himself, readjusting the straps on his backpack, shaking his hair out of his eyes. He pretends to fuss with his cell phone for a minute, trying to seem occupied. To seem like he has a reason to be there. 

When he looks back up, he sees the crinkled back of a yellow shirt, disappearing towards the quad. For a second, he forgets how to breathe. 

—

 

When Jean looks in the mirror, he’s never satisfied with what he sees. 

His mother always tells him he’ll grow into himself—he’ll get taller, he’ll get toned, he’ll slim down. He’s been waiting to grow into himself since he was seven years old. And he grows, alright—but its never the way that he wants to. 

It’s not that he thinks that he’s ugly, or anything. He’s got friends, and he plays football. A lot of guys at school think he’s a catch—they say so all the time. And Jean’s had a few girlfriends, and he can find a date for the weekends without trying very hard at all.

Still, he can’t help but wonder what it would be like to be fit and muscular like Eren, or a beanpole like Armin Arlert. There’s a way people talk to those guys. Maybe he’s just making it up, projecting his own insecurities where they don’t belong. Still, he can’t shake the feeling that fundamentally, he’s different. 

Sometimes when Jean gets to feeling down, he likes to imagine himself as a model. One of those guys in Calvin Klein ads who looks great in underwear and listens to cool indie music. He imagines how he would look in slim fit jeans, how long and elegant his neck might be, how bony and delicate his hands would seem. 

He’d wear whatever he wanted, and never think twice about it. Tight jeans, or oversized trousers.

Yellow button up shirts.

—

“His name is Marco Bodt,” Armin says, blue eyes peeking up between golden eyelashes.

They’re in the cafeteria, and Jean is picking his way through a dismal bologna sandwich, amber eyes glinting as he searches for a silky black head. 

Marco is standing in line to get a chocolate chip cookie, a pair of white sunglasses perched on his button-like nose. He’s wearing a pale lilac shirt, so soft and delicate that Jean can only describe it accurately as a blouse. It’s oversized and untucked, the tails trailing down to the backs of his thighs. His jeans are pink, skin tight and rolled up to mid calf, drawing attention to thin, elegant ankles tucked snuggly above blindingly white saddle shoes. 

“He looks like a fucking Sweetheart,” Jean says, although his gaze is greedy as he takes him in. So tall, and slim, and effortlessly cool. Jean would never tell anyone, of course, but he puts quite a bit of time and effort into being cool, and making it seem effortless. 

“He’s very nice,” Armin replies, surprised. Jean snorts, fisting his chocolate milk.

“I meant the candy. How do you know him?”

“He’s in my science lab. He doesn’t talk very much. He seems kind of shy,” Armin says thoughtfully, turning the cap of his diet coke over in his thin fingers. Jean can’t help but notice how comfortable Armin looks, in his oversized sweatshirt and Nike sweats. His hair is pulled back at his nape, revealing his long, swanlike neck. 

Jean could never wear his hair long. He’d never be caught dead in sweats at school, either. He already worries about looking lazy, or frumpy. In sweatpants, he would seem homely. Armin just seems relaxed. 

“He stands out like a sore thumb. For someone shy,” Jean says, arched brows drawn together. As he watches, Marco shifts his weight to his other hip, a faint smile tugging at his lips as a cookie is placed in his outstretched hand. 

“Maybe he’s trying not to be.”

Jean looks at Armin, gingerly setting his milk carton down on the table. 

He waits until Armin finishes his lunch, and then he finishes his own.

—

Marco only wears one pair of shoes.

Jean’s been watching him for nearly two months, and he can confirm that it’s true. He can also confirm that they are pristine, neatly polished, painstakingly well kept. 

Marco Bodt’s shoes are white, a pair of vintage saddle shoes with pastel pink laces. They do not have one scuff, nor are the soles worn through from use. 

It’s amusing to imagine that Marco Bodt cleans and buffs his shoes everyday. That he has a cobbler on call to ensure that the soles stay in prime condition. That he polishes and shines them each night before bed. 

Jean owns a bunch of shoes, all of them in various states of disrepair. He skateboards, and he wears them to practice, and to school everyday, and he’s never buffed one shoe in his entire life. His favorite pair are Adidas classics. The soles are nearly worn through and the laces are slowly coming unraveled, a symptom of kicking them off next to his bed and letting his cat gnaw on the strings. 

Marco seems to have a never-ending supply of socks, too—some of them long with patterns, some short and silky, just barely visibly above the line of his shoe. Some of them are thick and warm, but all of them are in mint condition, and all of them are vibrantly colorful.

Jean doesn’t own any special socks, unless you count the Calvin Klein ones his grandma got him for Christmas. He fantasizes that Marco Bodt’s socks are so perfect that they don’t even smell like feet. He fantasizes that Marco Bodt doesn’t even have the ability to sweat. That Marco Bodt doesn’t even put pressure on his feet when he walks, but rather floats gently along the floor. 

He wonders what it feels like, to be so weightless. 

—

The instructions on the box say to massage the polish into the leather, and he wonders what they mean by massage. He flexes his fingers, presses down into the boot, frowns.

He’s sitting on his bedroom floor, legs tucked criss cross apple sauce. His only pair of doc martens are sitting in his lap, a bottle of shoe polish on the rug beside him.   
It had been an impulse purchase, really. He’d been walking past Springer’s Shoes and had seen it sitting in the window display. He hardly ever wore his docs, anyway—he didn’t like how heavy he sounded when he walked in them. 

And yet, here he was, on a Friday night, boots in his lap, rag in his hand, massaging polish into the black leather with all the gentleness and poise of a rabid bull in a china store. 

He’d been invited to three different parties. Eren had even offered to set him up on a date with his cousin, Mikasa. 

But Jean had told them all he was too sick to go out.

It was a lie, but he’s grateful now that he told it.

Because even though he feels foolish rubbing the dark liquid over the surface of his shoe, and he doesn’t exactly know what he’s doing, there’s tension leaving his back like a coil unravelling. He feels strangely at ease, his mind thrumming as he focuses on the work.

Later, standing in front of his mirror with his boots on, he realizes that he feels kind of good about himself. 

—

“Dude, you look good,” Eren is saying, and Jean has to admit, he agrees. He shrugs his shoulder, as if its all par for the course. In reality, he’d spent an hour that morning picking out an outfit that made him feel just right. 

It’s a pair of jeans he’s never worn before—black ones that his aunt bought him for his birthday. They’re a snug fit, the sort of thing he never feels confident wearing out of the house, and certainly not to school. Today, though, is different. With his boots and jeans on, Jean feels pretty swish. He doesn’t even think about Calvin Klein models once, all day.

—

Marco Bodt doesn’t really have friends. 

Jean notices this by Christmastime. Marco sits alone in the cafeteria, headphones pressed into the shells of his ears, white sunglasses on his nose. Sometimes he takes those off, and Jean was pleased to notice the first time he did that he’d been right—Marco’s eyes are soft, and warm. 

It’s not that Marco isn’t friendly, because anyone Jean mentions him to says the same thing about him: that he’s very nice, and easy to talk to. 

Still, no one ever ventures over to the corner table, and after school Jean knows that Marco walks home by himself, hands tucked inside his pockets. 

He wonders if the others feel intimidated. Perhaps they, too, have fantasies about airy, floating Marco and his perfect ankles and girlish lips. 

A few times, it occurs to him that he could simply walk over himself, sit down and start a conversation. He never thinks up anything to say. 

—

The last day before break, Jean sees Marco smoking a cigarette. It’s cold out, and he’s wrapped up warm in a sky blue peacoat, mint green jeans poking out underneath. His ankles are exposed, a thin pink sock line just visible over the edge of his perfectly white saddle shoe. 

He nearly walks into Reiner Braun, who seems surprisingly unfazed despite the fact that Jean had nearly knocked his tooth out during practice the night before. 

“Hey, Kirstein. You look good, man.”

“Thanks, dude,” he replies, and he feels warm all the way down to his fingertips. He’s been wearing more colors lately.

When he looks back up, his eyes find Marco out of habit.

He’s surprised to see white frames looking back at him, Marco leaning against the brick wall with a cigarette poised like a 50s pinup at his side. From this distance, Jean can count all those gorgeous freckles.

Marco moves before his brain can process what’s happening, crushing his cigarette beneath the perfect sole of his white shoe and gliding down the sidewalk.

Jean can feel his tongue swell inside his mouth.

—

In Spring, Jean buys a leather jacket. It’s nothing special, just a standard bomber style thing—but when he puts it on, he feels like he can do anything. He’s started wearing his hair different—a little longer, and styled like James Dean. He wears a lot of soft t-shirts. He polishes his boots every night.

Six different girls ask him to the Spring dance, and he turns them all down. 

He’s fairly certain he knows why. 

During free period, Marco Bodt is sitting on a checkered blanket, one Jean is sure he’s brought from home.

Marco has his long legs stretched out in front of him, his hands pressed behind him, propping him up. His white sunglasses are resting gently on his nose, his silky black hair trembling softly in the breeze.

He’s wearing the yellow shirt and the sky blue pants again, his ankles bare above his white saddle shoes. 

Jean sucks in a deep breath, stepping over the medium that divides the quad from the field. 

The container in his hand feels like it weight two tons, and Jean is sure he is sweating through the back of his shirt. Still, it doesn’t stop him from kneeling down slowly on the yellow blanket, eyes fixed on white frames.

“I thought I’d sit with you,” he says carefully, laying the container between them like an offering. He snaps off the lid, pushing it forward. Inside, dozens of gorgeous red strawberries glint in the sunlight, sparkling with sugar. 

Girlish lips twitch, lifting at the corners. 

“It’s about time,” Marco Bodt says, and when he smiles Jean swears he begins to float.

**Author's Note:**

> merry christmas, phoe! i hope you enjoyed it! this was super fun for me to write <3


End file.
